Friday Reading #122

Namaste from everyone at Goodstuff, we are feeing particularly zen after this weeks FeelGood week activities. From some restorative yoga, to helpful financial wellbeing introductions (and who doesn’t need those in January?) we’re definitely feeling the good vibes over in Goodstuff HQ.

January is all about kicking bad habits, and this new short film by Us, is delightfully nostalgic, reminding us of all those Cautionary Tales and habits we’ve (hopefully) left in our childhood.

For anyone needing a bit of faith restored in humanity, Burger King’s truce with McDonalds is a refreshing attitude from brands, putting differences aside to share the goal of raising the most money possible for a good cause.

And if that didn’t work for any of you cynics out there, take a look at these handy Instructions for World Peace. Max Siedentopf offers both silly but significant advice about making the world a better place, inspired by those infuriating tutorials that tell you “how to do absolutely-anything-you-could-think-of”.

While the merging of health care and technology is no new thing, more and more women are now putting their reproductive health in the hands of tech. This return to a more natural lifestyle that’s facilitated through technology is definitely prompting a larger discussion surrounding wellness.

Up for discussion: the importance of brand purpose. Have a read of these opposing views, one critique, and one defence, both offering some relevant and current opinions on corporate attempts to be socially relevant, calling out Cadbury’s, Pepsi, Heineken, Dove and McDonald’s.

We hope you’re enjoying the new look Friday Reading, as part of the new year changes, we’re going to be publishing an op-ed from different people around the agency in the last Friday Reading of every month. Feedback is always welcome!

Why we should all be more Gen Z

As we enter into 2018, bouncers, bartenders and agency recruiters across the country are faced with a strange, inescapable fact; people born in the year 2000 are now becoming legal adults. While many companies are still trying to get their heads around the narcissistic, entitled, hoody wearing Millennials, they’re now faced with a whole new cohort of young people to understand. But there’s every reason to be hopeful, and maybe even to learn something from this new generation.

Millennials are generally defined as people who came of age around the year 2000, which puts them between 36, and anywhere from 25 to 19 depending on which particular definition you subscribe to. They grew up in the relative economic prosperity of the late 1990s, where the dawn of the internet age promised a glorious and exciting future – before social and economic turnmoil marred their steps into adulthood, defined by 9/11 and the global financial crisis. A generation who saw a bright future, and had it slip through their fingers.

The apathy felt by Gen X, the jaded children of industrial decline in the ‘80s, drove them to art, music and social rebellion, Millennials had their dreams and expectations collide with the reality of the world as they entered adulthood, while their successors had their eyes open from the beginning. Gen Z grew up in an age defined by immediate access to the world’s information, where the internet provides opportunities if you’re able to take hold of them.

Speak to a young person under 18, and it’s remarkable how conscientious and hard working they are. Stratospheric university fees and house prices don’t phase them, because they’ve never known anything else. This prudence could make them dull and dutiful, but it doesn’t. They don’t drink less than their forebears because of some modern puritanism or fear of their bank balance, but because they’ve found more joy and satisfaction in spending time with friends and family. In the virtues of exercise. Why spend half of Saturday lolling around feeling like death when you could have a couple less drinks on the night, remember the conversations with friends, then spend the morning doing something active?

This desire to suck all the marrow from life extends to their attitudes to work. It’s early days for their working lives, but it seems the spirit of entrepreneurialism is strong with Gen Z. They are willing and able to teach themselves skills alongside their core education, with some ditching the costs of university altogether to pursue flexible, multifaceted careers freelancing.

Learning new skills online is a given, and the self-directional nature of it empowers them with a sense of personal responsibility for how they shape their lives. This instils a social optimism that Millennials famously lacked, a sense of connection to the world that makes them feel they can change it for the better. Gen Z are more interested and active in social, racial and sexual equality and environmental protection than generations before them.

It’s easy to write them off as smartphone addicts with microscopic attention spans, glued to idiot YouTubers who’ll do anything for views – but scratch below the surface and there’s a lot to learn if we take the time to understand them.